3D Illusion Sand Art on a New Zealand Beach by Jamie Harkins, David Rendu and Constanza Nightingale

With little more than a stick and a rake, Jamie Harkins and a small team of artists who collectively formed 3DSD have been producing these remarkable temporary artworks on a beach in New Zealand. 3DSD stands for 3 Dimensional Sand Drawing and their giant pieces incorporate perspective, illusion, and a form of distorted projection known as anamorphosis. While these drawings might not make sense to passing beach strollers close up, and will appear skewed when viewed from a distance, if they are viewed from a particular point they suddenly take on perfect perspective.

Jamie Harkins is best known for his surrealist landscape artworks, so why not make the landscape itself surreal for a day? The sand of Makatana beach near Mt Maunganui offers an enormous, free canvas for 3DSD to work on by simply disturbing the sand with a rake to create shading. As the tide comes in, the artworks are of course washed away but Harkins enjoys the impermanence of the medium — and the pieces can of course be remembered through photographs.